I Picked Up the Abandoned Hero

13 – 13. Contract with the Devil

“…Stella.”

“Looks like it was true, that you killed those kids and headed for the demons. I- I hope you didn’t.”

There, unlike before, an emaciated elf was aiming a bow at him.

I know what’s in those eyes even if I don’t say it.

Betrayal, revenge, collapse.

That was the look many people looked at Arcel until now.

“No… I didn’t kill them. I also wanted to prevent their deaths.”

“Then why have you been with that all this time? Have you forgotten what that monster did? Humans don’t call him Satan for nothing, he’s just a monster. A monster with a form that is neither a demon nor a human.”

Stella pointed her bow at Arcel and questioned him.

Especially Stella’s eyes were dark.

What could have accumulated so much other than fatigue?

What makes it so painful?

Emotions that she doesn’t normally have were deeply engraved in her eyes.

“But the monster prince who protected you is no longer there, because Karkal has already told you about that monster.”

Arcel closed her eyes tightly and pointed her hand at the sword at her waist before she stopped.

She couldn’t win with a body like this anyway, and she, who was her precious companion, didn’t want to point her sword at him again.

Maybe that’s why not only my eyes were shaking, but my hands were also shaking.

Even if that elf knew that, he didn’t attack right away even though he could blow his head right away.

Do you know that you are not a threat to yourself anyway?

“I heard that monster sticks it right away even if it cuts off its head? So I completely removed the hair so that it could never be attached again.”

The elf came closer and closer.

Even if resurrection is possible, it will take time if the head is blown off.

Snakes that regenerate even if they cut off their heads previously also took quite a while to regenerate if all their heads were cut off.

Stella took out her dagger from her bosom and headed for Arcel, as if it was no longer worth using even a bow.

“…Karkal said you were a witch, but I meant to hear the story until the end, unless you were with that monster.”

“…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll kill you too and follow you soon. I can’t live in a world like this anymore… I didn’t mean to subdue the demon lord with you for this.”

“What are you talking about, Stella. Just because you punish me doesn’t mean you have to-“

“…I’m tired, I thought the tragedy would disappear if I subdue the Demon King. The world hasn’t changed at all.”

Stella approached Arcel biting her lip.

Seeing that, Arcel couldn’t bear to run away.

I don’t know what the hell has happened to her in the last 5 years, but it’s because I feel like she’s been through a lot of pain too.

“We both did the unforgivable thing anyway, we’ve done what we had to do. …Let’s get comfortable together.”

“No. There’s no reason for you to do that either! I am the only one who has to pay for my sins!”

That was when Stella tried to lift the dagger with a smile and tears in her eyes.

“Is it your hobby to die holding hands together? Isn’t it so pitiful and stupid to think that it’s okay if you can give your life to finish the job?”

“Alfred…?”

“…!”

Stella’s hostility is revived.

She first looked at Alfred’s body, where her head was missing.

However, the body did not move.

I didn’t particularly notice any magic power.

My head disappeared in the first place, but there was no way I could move normally, and there was no way I could hear my voice like before.

‘Could it have been a trap from the beginning?!’

Then he’ll be somewhere else.

In the first place, the Satan Alfred in my memory used magic that even high-ranking elves had never heard of, playing with it as if anyone else was playing with it in the palm of their hand.

‘From the beginning, it might have been fake, they said it was strange. Seeing that even though they noticed my presence, they didn’t even respond.’

Then there was no guarantee that the same thing as the previous one would not happen again this time.

Perhaps its body is hiding somewhere here.

That was just an alter ego to lure her from the beginning, and when Stella quickly explored the surroundings.

“Where are you looking? I am here.”

“What-“

With that ominous voice, I felt a movement behind my back that I shouldn’t have.

“You can’t be vigilant just because your head is blown. If you want to be vigilant, shouldn’t you at least crush me without a trace?”

“Ah…!”

Gasp!

I tried to react right away, but my wrist caught in an instant.

That too from a headless monster.

Unbelievably, Alfred was moving and talking without any problems even with his head gone.

Soon.

“…Then the bad goblin who blows other people’s hair carelessly should be punished a bit?”

“Wait, Alfred-“

Duduk!

Like a tree branch broken in a strong rainstorm, Stella’s arm was also broken in a similar shape.

“aaah…!!!”

With just a little bit of force from Alfred, it was very easy for the non-jointed parts to bend.

Stella screamed in pain and finally sat down.

It was only natural that I was attacked by an unexpected surprise.

Thanks to Arcel, who was startled by the sight and ran to it, I managed to escape.

“Ugh, ugh…”

Alfred let go of Arcel’s hand as he came running, and Stella barely staggered away.

However, due to his broken wrist, a counterattack was impossible.

Even though he endured the pain to hold the bow, it was because he couldn’t pull the string with his broken hand anyway.

“What are you doing?! She is my colleague! She doesn’t need to be brutally suppressed like that-“

Of course, Arsel questioned Alfred as if he was greatly embarrassed by such behavior.

“What are you talking about? Why is that dwarf your colleague? Even if it’s a former colleague, I don’t know.”

“…Alfred?”

However, Alfred reacted as coldly as that night, as if he could not understand Arcel.

“That goblin is here to kill you. If he is going to take someone else’s life, he should be prepared for the fact that he could also be taken. Didn’t you learn that?”

“However, when Lord Karkal came before, you returned him safely. But why this time…”

“That’s because the knight didn’t really want to kill you, because his eyes were shaking until the end. But that dwarf isn’t like that. He really tried to kill you.”

Alfred glared at Stella.

Even though he had no head, it was as if he could feel the cold air that took his breath away just by looking at it.

“Besides, what kind of scumbag doesn’t even listen to his colleagues and makes his own conclusions? Can you really call that a colleague? For now, I don’t think so.”

“…!”

However, the words that followed were even more callous than those eyes.

For Stella, the words she had just uttered were more painful than Alfred’s breaking her wrist.

That was right.

Arsel was a precious companion.

You could say that he was more than a colleague and was the one and only benefactor that was as precious as his life.

However, he himself only listened to people’s words and saw only the surface she had briefly seen, and arbitrarily concluded that she had betrayed her.

‘Come to think of it, why…’

It was strange when I thought about it.

Why did he decide so early?

At first, I wanted to hear more from Arcel, but at some point, I came to the conclusion that she was really a traitor.

Of course, most people would have said that when they saw the man next to Arcel, but shouldn’t he, at least as a colleague, have thought that way?

You should have at least heard the story.

Is he really her colleague and friend?

“That’s why I’m going to kill you here, because the grudges of the demons grow. There is no remorse if you kill me here.”

Alfred’s finger pointed at Stella.

“Alfred…! Request! Please don’t kill Stella. If she dies right in front of my eyes, I…”

I can’t stand it anymore.

Arsel seemed to say that.

Even then, he couldn’t do anything while his comrades were dying in front of his eyes, and he knew that even now he could never stop Alfred with his body like this, so he could only pray.

“…”

Alfred ponders for a moment while looking at Arcel.

“Okay, so what?”

He lowered his hand as if nothing had happened.

I thought it was an unexpected reaction from both Arcel and Stella.

For some reason Alfred looked at Arcel with pity.

“Jeong, really…?”

“You asked me not to kill you? Or should I kill him now? Have you changed your mind? Then kill it right away Blow your hair clean.”

“No! Absolutely not!”

It was hard to believe that he had tried to kill Stella just five seconds ago.

How do people’s emotions change so quickly?

But I didn’t like that. Arcel, barely reassured that Stella was not dead, took Alfred’s hand.

But after the tension was relieved, the sight of Alfred without a head made him feel a little creepy.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

Seeing that, Alfred slowly puts his hand to the headless neck.

And slowly.

The hand that had covered his neck turned upward, and Alfred’s head, which had apparently disappeared, reappeared from his mouth.

I couldn’t explain it simply as regeneration of damage.

Arsel had seen something similar before, but this one felt more alien than ever.

“Is that enough?”

“Yeah, yeah… that’s it.”

“Then what to do with that dwarf?”

With his head back, Alfred glared at Stella with narrow eyes.

Stella sat down on the floor holding her wrist.

It must have been painful to have his bones broken raw, but more than that, he seemed shocked by what he was about to do.

“…Please understand Stella. The last time she parted with me, she had gone to put down a rebellion in her hometown. Maybe she didn’t know much about what happened after that.”

“What rebellion? To the country of the dwarves?”

“Yes, I heard that. Why?”

“What are you talking about? What happened to the land of the dwarves was not a rebellion. I went to see her with her grandmother the other day, and it was more like an epidemic than a rebellion.”

“…What do you mean by that?”

Arsel asked in a trembling voice.

“Let me briefly explain, there is a plague in the country of the elves. But the plague lowers cognitive abilities and slowly makes people violent. Of course, those stupid dwarves didn’t even know it was an infectious disease.”

Alfred smiled and looked at Stella.

“Because dwarves live long enough, they are arrogant and stupid, so people who got sick and killed each other would have been regarded as rebellion. Without finding out the root cause of the rebellion.”

“Damn, don’t talk your way, monster! It was just something created by some rebels! It’s not something a non-elf can say carelessly-“

“My maternal grandmother did that. Oh, by the way, my maternal grandmother is an elf? The high elves you treat so terribly.”

“What… Nonsense…”

Stella managed to regain her sanity and become enraged at Alfred’s attitude, but the more she behaved, the more her spirit only grew more and more exhausted.

“Whether you believe me or not is up to you. Anyway, it’s not in my interest that you dwarves perish.”

He continued to fight for 5 years even after he subdued the demon lord himself.

Just unexpected.

There was a rumor that some elves had killed the villagers and killed the village chief in their hometown, and the scale of the story grew and began to threaten the entire land of the elves.

“Isn’t it funny? Even though my neighbor, who I lived with for hundreds of years, had changed so much, I didn’t notice anything strange. Rather, they were in a hurry to kill them for lowering their dignity.”

As for how it ended, Alfred said it wasn’t even worth checking.

In the first place, he said that the ending was right in front of his eyes.

“…Well, how can people who don’t even notice the strange things that happened to themselves know about that?”

“Shut up! This filthy satan- so big?!”

At that time, Stella suddenly collapsed vomiting blood.

The only injury Alfred inflicted was a broken wrist, but no internal injuries.

Still, the fact that he vomited blood was highly likely to have been the cause before he came here.

“Stella! No!”

“Arsel. You shouldn’t have stopped me from killing that dwarf. Rather, I was trying to be merciful because I am your colleague.”

“Leave this, Alfred! Let go!”

Arcel tried to run right away, but Alfred grabbed his hand and didn’t let go.

“No, if you get close now, you will be killed. According to her grandmother, if it’s enough to vomit blood-“

As a test, I brought a skeleton close to Stella instead.

Kwajik!

“It’s late. I can’t go back anymore.”

Stella put an arrow through the skeleton’s head.

However, instead of shooting her with a bow, I rushed directly into her body and shot her down with arrows until her skull was shattered.

“Ah…”

It seemed that he committed it against his will.

Stella looked at the shattered bones and at her own bloody hands.

My hands are shaking so much that I can never say it’s normal.

This was not a trembling caused by abnormal emotions.

There must be something terribly wrong physically.

“I heard the news a few days ago that the human nation was capturing and imprisoning elves at random, and burning alive those who showed abnormal symptoms?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Alfred. Are you really telling me to believe that? Doing such a terrible thing…?”

“Unfortunately, that is the reality, although there is no guarantee that it will be contagious to humans. I can’t take any risks. From a human point of view, that would be the best.”

Arsel’s legs gave out at the reality that Alfred told him, and he collapsed.

Elves are comrades who have fought together for a long time.

They sang justice even though their land was not directly damaged by the demons, and many elves lent their strength to the war against the demons.

But imprisoning them wasn’t enough, and I couldn’t believe that they were burned alive.

What on earth happened in the 5 years after the demon lord was subdued?

“Then I’ll be merciful to you, because I’m in a good mood these days. Normally, I would just ignore it and pass by, but you give me special treatment.”

Alfred pointed his finger at Stella again.

From Alfred’s point of view, it was a whim he would never do unless he came back to life.

‘Ah… I see…’

Stella looked back at herself with her eyes undone.

I don’t know when it started like this, but I ended up trying to kill Arcel, who was her friend and benefactor.

Then it would be the punishment for that.

“…Alfred, can I ask you a favor?”

Even so.

“What is your request? I can listen to anything you ask for. Of course, some may have to pay a price. That’s what being helped by the devil is like.”

“It doesn’t matter… You can take my soul or my body, whatever you want.”

“Really? Can you really do whatever you want?”

“Yes…”

Arcel pleaded with Alfred as she knelt down.

Please ask for Stella’s life, firmly believing that if it’s you, you’ll be able to do that.

“Okay, then I’ll save you. Being a dwarf isn’t my specialty, so it will take a little time, but I’ll keep you alive. It’s okay to be at ease.”

After receiving that plea, Alfred stretched out his hand to Arsel.

“Then, in return, sleep next to me when you sleep. Until I break your curse, sleeping is a waste. Let’s replace morning greetings with that. Are you fine?”

“…You’re so consistent, I can’t believe you’re okay with just that.”

Thanks to that, Arcel could barely smile.

The fact that I no longer have to let my comrades go in front of me is very relieved.